Welcome to Tivoli—Where It All Begins

We arrived in Tivoli in Italy by train. It was late, around 10 p.m. Pitch dark, the ground soaking wet after a rainfall.

Was this Tivoli? I looked nervously at Kristina, who was sitting next to the window on the opposite side, facing me. She nodded, though not completely sure. Luckily, Google Maps managed to confirm it after a few seconds. (We struggled with getting an internet connection).

We had boarded the train to Tivoli at Tiburtina train station in Rome forty minutes earlier. The train was supposed to leave from track 29, but there was no train there, and the departure was just a few minutes away.

However, there was one train on the right side of the platform, on track 30, heading to Avezzano.

“Is this the one?” Kristina asked.

“I guess so,” I replied.

She did a quick search on her phone. “This is it,” she said. “At least I think so.”

We got on. After struggling with our heavy backpacker rucksacks and handbags, we found a set of four chairs where we sat down facing each other.

“Is there anyone we can ask? Just to be sure,” Kristina asked.

Well, I did see a train conductor on the outside, I thought. I jumped up, ran out onto the platform, but the conductor was nowhere to be found. I looked around. Next to a trash can in front of me I saw a police officer with a gun in his belt. He was tearing up the wrappings of a chocolate bar with his back to me.

“Excuse me,” I said (in English), approaching him as a distressed lunatic. I could hear the train doors close behind me. Through the window I saw Kristina with our rucksacks. Would the train leave without me?

“Che cosa?” The police officer said, sounding annoyed.

“The train to Avezzano–will it stop in Tivoli?”

“Tivoli?” He looked up in the air, searching for the answer. “Sì. Tivoli,” he finally said.

I ran back, pressed the green LED button on the train door, and luckily they separated like Moses dividing the Red Sea.

Once the train left we realized that the next stop wouldn’t be announced or shown on any screen inside. It felt like you had to be a local to take this train. To our luck, our phones also struggled with the internet connection, so Google Maps had a hard time updating our position in real time.

At the train station in Tivoli, with each of our Osprey backpacker rucksacks on the back, we got out on the platform. Realising that the train station looked like something out of a Stephen King horror novel. Was this how the cozy little town of Tivoli had looked on pictures on Google?

I looked to my left. Then right. All I could see was an older guy walking towards us with a piece of bread underneath his arm. He passed us and then went through a door in the ridiculously run down train station. (At least it looked like that in the dark).

We followed the old man. Like two sheeps.

The door led to the parking lot. The old man had been just twenty meters  in front of us, but now he was nowhere to be seen. Like the bread he held was actually an invisibility cloak and we were missing Marauder’s map.

On the other side of the valley we could see the many lights of Tivoli. The Aniene river, which is almost 100 kilometers long, flowed westward down the gorge. According to Google Maps it would take us fifteen minutes to walk to our Airbnb in Via del Duomo in the old town. But there was no sign of where we should go. Luckily, Google told us to continue straight ahead.

So we did.

As we continued down a dark pathway parallel to the river (a perfect spot for a serial killer to do his or her thing), we spotted the old man again. He turned right onto Ponte Della Pace, an arched bridge that connects the train station with the small hillside city of Tivoli.

At this point we had been traveling for twelve hours. Airplane. Walking. Waiting. Another airplane. Walking. Waiting. Picking up two twenty kilo rucksacks. Train. Walking. Another train. Not to mention the uncertainty of where we were heading. So we were tired. Both physically and mentally.

Down the dark pathway and over Ponte Della Pace it started to be some space between me and Kristina. I had a fast pace, eager to get to our Airbnb and toss the rucksack on the floor and leave it there for the whole week we would be here. Kristina, with a heavier rucksack than me and with a heavy handbag, struggled to keep my tempo.

I started to mumble and express my feelings with the unpleasant situation. Not towards Kristina or caused by her. But about traveling, waiting, walking with heavy loads, being hungry (or hangry). At one point I also clearly expressed that I can’t be a middle-class guy anymore, cause I need to travel like a high-net-worth individual, with private planes, no waiting, no check-in lines, no trains leaving on a schedule other than mine, et cetera.

When we got to the other side of the bridge, we met what felt like a hundred steps that we had to climb to get to ground level in Tivoli. Ugh! I sighed. Loudly.

Kristina was equally tired but didn’t express it in the same way. I offered to carry her handbag since she was tired and struggling, and so we might get to our Airbnb faster. She handed it to me, leaving her phone in her handbag. I assured her that I had memorized the route, so the phone could just stay in her bag.

The first thing that met us in Tivoli was an ambulance that banked through a roundabout with sirens blaring. To our right was an old beige building with ten floors. Just as expected. The Ospedale. The hospital. 

So far so good.

We turned right at the ospedale. Entering Via Antonio Parozzani, where we just had to follow the road straight ahead, and then we would reach the orange building with green shutters, where we would stay for the next week.

We walked through streets that couldn’t be anymore Italian if they tried. It was cobblestone on the ground. Small boutiques. Apartments with clotheslines outside their windows.

It was surreal to be in what looked like a postcard.

But at the same time it was dark. There were almost no other people to see. And we were tired. At one point it felt unsafe.

Ten meters in front of Kristina, I entered a new street–Via Colsenero. I didn't recognize it from my research earlier the same day. It was too narrow. Too dark.

“Ahh,” I shouted out. “We must have gone the wrong way.”

“Check the phone,” Kristina suggested.

I placed both mine and her bag on the ground and looked at the phone. According to Google Maps, we were exactly where we should be. I tried to laugh it off, but I always make a fool of myself in these kinds of situations.

We continued.

When we got to Piazza del Plebiscito, we passed a bar where a couple of guys were smoking on the outside. Speaking italian. Staring at us. Me in front. Kristina a few meters behind me. I guess the guys were in shock. Tourists in Tivoli at this time of year? Whaaaat!

Two hundred meters after the Piazza we arrived at our Airbnb. A bright orange three-story building. Of course we had to argue with a wall-mounted lockbox to get the key out. But finally we succeeded.

We opened the main door. Climbed the steep staircase. And unlocked the door to our apartment. The first thing that met us inside was a wallpaper over the entire kitchen wall that mimicked roman columns.

And then it hit me.

We were finally in Italy. The two of us. On our shared adventure.

And I can’t wait for the rest. (Despite me hating the travel part).